At the Music Development Office we offer support and resources to schools to assist the teaching of music; we offer advice and some financial support for extra-curricular Music and we provide opportunities for pupils to extend their musical experience through ensembles, workshops and special events.

The following links will answer the most commonly asked questions about music opportunities for Sunderland pupils.

Exciting news - From March this year The Learning Technologies Innovation Team will become Knetic Education

Mark and Jane are highly experienced teachers who over the years have gained accreditation in a number of areas. Because of this we are able to offer you the highest quality support. We work on a cost recovery model so the team is only able to exist thanks to the subscription fees paid by Sunderland schools. We are proud to say that this means that the service is truly owned by you. Whether you buy in or nit we can work with you but naturally our subscribers get the gold standard from us. If you want more information on the benefits of subscribing take a look the the article below.

Team Accreditations Include

As Adobe Education Trainers we deliver training in Adobe products like Photoshop & Premiere to students and teachers.

We can give advice to schools who are thinking of going for their ICT mark

We are Lead Practitioners with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust - We also deliver training around the country for the Teacher Effectiveness Enhancement Programme.

As an RTC we deliver courses that help teachers to make the best use of Apple technologies for learning

Ambassadors

As CEOP Ambassdors we are traiined to deliver CEOP accredited e-safety training

Schools who have bough devices qualify for free training through the Apple Education Trainer programme. You can also buy in Apple developed courses through this programme for your school.

Given that this is a great period of change for schools, and there are real challenges faced in moving toward the Computing Curriculum, School Improvement have agreed to make a salary contribution too. We are both delighted to have this opportunity to work with School Improvement to develop the service further.

Things are really looking up for the team now, our ICT coordinators update meetings are becoming more and more popular, we have a number of schools and making use of our ICT audits, support for schools introducing mobile devices has really taken off and schools continue to make use of our e-Safety advice and training.

This is not the end of the story however, like any service we rely on you buying in for us to be able to continue. From looking at how we have operated over the past year it seems that schools are most likely to book us a month or two before they want to use us. As you can imagine this makes it difficult for us to demonstrate that we have enough take-up of the service long term. If you think that your school will want to make use of our services in the coming months please get in touch. We would also like to offer all schools a free needs assessment meeting where we will come out and spend an hour or so discussing your vision for using learning technologies and how we can support you to achieve this. Please contact us if you feel you would benefit from a discussion.

We have big plans to grow the service moving forward in the light of feedback we have had from schools. we are currently:-

Working with ICT leads to produce a new computing curriculum for Sunderland Schools

Establishing our base at Monkwearmouth School to allow us to have classes in and run CPD courses

Re-launching our Apple Regional Training Centre with training specific to schools who want to use Apple technologies in the classroom

Establishing a mobile device user group to support schools making use of iPads and other devices